Earthtongue
1.4.2 Extinction Hotfix!
(no that joke will never be old)
- Fossils were accidentally set to debug values and spawning laughably easy. Expect fossils, especially major and grand ones, to actually require maintaining a species for a long time to acheive
- Research Journals for modules were broken, but should be fixed now
- Redundant Modules should no longer be getting loaded multiple times in the module select window
- You cannot break fossils multiple times
- Mushroom roots should not longer prevent the player from cracking fossils
Thank you for bringing this to my attention to everyone!
"EXTINCTION" Update [1.4]
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Hey! Looks like it's time for a new update! The theme on this update is Extinction. To this end, some encouraging journal entries concerning death and extinction have been added,
as well as a new Fossils mechanic that can create permanent beneficial marks on your work when a long-lived species goes extinct. Additionally, there have been quite a number
of polish updates and a few balance adjustments.
NEW MAJOR FEATURE: Fossils
Fossils are a new type of structure that appears underground when long-lived (7000/14000/28000 age respectively) species go extinct. Fossils act as a minor progression piece of the world,
and serve as memoirs to successful species.
- Depending on the species age when it goes extinct, either a Minor, Major, or Grand Fossil is created, which are visually distinct.
- Fossils slowly emit nutrient around themselves, with more depending on the tier.
- Clicking on a fossil causes it to emit nutrient around itself, but also cracks it. Pace yourself! If you crack the fossil too often, it will break and be deleted.
- However, breaking a fossil will immediately give you a large amount of interventions.
THE NEW:
- added new journal entry Death
- added new journal entry Extinction
- if you want to reset your journal, you can press Control+Alt+C to use the debug command to do so. Be warned: it will happen instantly and there is no recorvery.
> later on there will be a built-in option for resets.
- Snails can now climb tallstalk fungi (such as mushrooms), it is now a unique snail behavior that they will climb tall fungi as they feed on them, for food and safety.
- Interventions now have a price multiplier, when used, an intervention will dramatically increase in cost and then decay back to its previous price. In return, most have been made a bit cheaper.
- added a special Detailed Nutrient Metrics window to help diagonose your world's health: see your nutrient capacity, and how much of it is locked away in raw nutrient / dead fungus / dead bug / biomass!
REBALANCING:
- water osmosis has been adjusted: it now occurs more slowly, causing wet surface soil to retain moisture longer after rain (additionally improving performance)
- initial soil nutrient content has been adjusted dramatically: it now initially forms in striations and bands instead of evenly distributed.
- Random Immigrations are reduced
- Player Immigrations now occur on-screen instead of in a random place on the map
- Random Event Immigrations still occur randomly across the map, but random bug immigrations now prefer to drop onto areas with fungi. This should hopefully decrease the amount of bugs that immigrate and then go extinct before having any meaningful interactions with the world. It is still advised that you go find your new bug and place it in a position you think it will do best in. (or WORST in, if you'd rather it just be gone)
- Random Bug and Fungi Immigrations will preferentially pick species that are not currently available on the map.
- Living Biomass now additionally counts towards the Nutrient total, just like stray nutrient and dead biomass, which can slow nutrient fall rate.
- Wind Comb has had its "deeproot" gene removed (sorry, windcomb!)
- Spores now spend more time in the air before falling
- Nutrient now leeches upwards at a higher rate (but still slowly). Nutrient only leeches upwards towards wet soil (>25% wetness).
- the Intervention cap has been raised from 30 to 50
- the Passive Intervention Rate has been halved
VISUALS:
- moisture and nutrient display has been slightly reworked. The new appearance is more visually appealing, as well as more effective at communicating information.
- some feedback animations have been added to a few animations (such as an effect when picking up a bug or spore)
- some other sprites have been improved or reworked: Spiderwebs, Yellow Mold, Green Mold, Wind Comb, Roach, Cordyceps
- new particle effect on meteors
- spores now "fade in" when spawned, and have a subpixel floating effect
- most fungi have been given simple "idle animation" additions, much like the only the mushrooms have had for a while.
- a minor text display to show changes in interventions
AUDIO:
- some new sound effects have been added to various actions
- you can now hear bug chirping ambiance, which increases in volume based on the quantity of bugs present on screen. Fun fact: I personally recorded this audio.
BUGFIXING
- fixed a visual issue where the sprites for moisture were not probably changing when a tile changed from being surface to non-surface
- the issue where sometimes when you clicked on an entity to pick it up and it wouldn't work should now be fixed
- The steam workshop uploader should work now (previously you had to roll back to 1.2 to have a working version)
Thank you for playing everyone! If you haven't already, please consider leaving a review and checking out the workshop for other Modules! (and make sure to let any module creators know if you like their module!)
(and maybe follow my Twitter)
Patch 1.3.2 Nutricycle
Hey! Some new genes for use in Modules were requested, so I've added them, and also implemented most of them in existing earthtongue species. You can view said species if you want an example for how to use the gene in your own modules.
New Genes:
- allow module support for unique deadfungus sprites (under the Sprites/Map folder)
- created fungus gene: deadfungus_multi (a decimal value and multiplies the amount of dead fungus generated by that fungus by that amount.)
- created herbivore gene: Picky (a bool, if true this bug only eats living fungus.)
- created new life form gene: taste. (a string. the life form's taste value, normally empty, will be defined as this string.)
- created bug gene: refuse_taste. (a string. This bug will not eat anything with a taste value that matches the string. this gene can be taken multiple times.)
Rebalance (utilizations of genes:
- Blue Mushrooms now produce extra dead fungus (1.2x)
- Moths are now Picky
- Wasps dislike eating snails, and do not consider them prey.
- Moths dislike the taste "Fruit".
- Fruit Pods and Brown Pods now have the taste "Fruit".
Update 1.3: The Nutricycle
Hello! Oh wow, that was quick! I went into fix a few bugs but instead ended up spending the past week working fervently, and I have this.. honestly rather significant patch to bring you.
This patch involves a very thorough rebalancing of the game, as well as increased visibility on some of the more esoteric features. The main focus of this patch is in fleshing out the Nutrient Cycle in the world.
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New Features:
- When a fungus takes damage from starvation or thirst, it drops "Dead Fungus" on the ground. Dead Fungus rots into nutrient extremely slowly, but herbivores can eat it, preferentially choosing to do so over living fungus on the same tile.
- Dead Fungus Mass counts as "Nutrient" when summing for the Nutrient Cap. Dead Fungus must be eaten so that the nutrient can be recycled back into the environment via waste emission and respiration (eating it will stop it from potentially pausing the nutrifall).
- Bug corpse biomass contributes towards the Nutrient Sum as well, just like dead fungus it needs to be eaten so that the nutrient can be recylcled back into the environment.
- Fungus that is at full health gains half of its sustain-hunger as plantfat, which, when starving, it is able to use to half the damage it takes from starvation. Plants drawing upon plantfat will release more dead fungus that usual.
QOL/Visuals:
- Additional metrics by species are present on their journal page (species-wide population, biomass, and most importantly: species age)
- Arrows display the rate of intervention gain
- Arrows display the relative nutrifall rate (very important for diagnosing the health of the world)
- New markers on species journal entry buttons now easily inform the player whether or not a species is present at all in current world
- Intervention Quantity text colors itself green to represent that interventions are at maximum capacity
- Fires are visually enhanced by particle effects
Rebalancing:
- Fungal Hunger demands have been slightly reduced globally
- Carnivorous fungi that swallow prey (Hungry Pod, Pitcher Stalk) now digest their meals a bit faster
- Spore-Belching Fungi (Hungry Pod, Brown Pod) now belch a slightly more dramatic amount of spores
- Tallstalk Fungi will now always attempt to reach at least a height of one above the ground.
- All detrivores have had their lifespan extended by significant amounts, thus delaying egg laying. This is intended to reduce the severity of detrivores surviving off the bodies of their parents.
- All detrivores have had their egg hatching time extended, hopefully producing effects similar to above.
- Egg brood mechanics have been adjusted somewhat, occasionally an egg will produce 50% less brood (eggs always produce at least 1 young) to curb overpopulation issues.
- Bug now decay much slower. Detrivore manure can expedite reconversion to nutrient.
- Sticky Fungus touching bug corpses cause the bug corpses to decay significantly faster.
- Initial Worldstate now has a minimum tile height of 2.
- World Gen now generates three "spires" and two "chasms" on the map (they may not always be visible if they generate on top of existing extreme terrain).
- Egg hatch times are no longer entirely predetermined, every egg has a random amount of hatch time extended to it.
- Bugs that have laid a clutch of eggs cease feeding and allow themselves to waste away to prevent them from competing with their young.
- Bugs require a stricter health condition to lay their eggs than before (Vit 75% -> Vit 90%)
- Nutrifall rate adjusted: nutrient now falls faster when there is less of it present in the world, and slower at the cap is approached.
- Spore generation rate has been decreased
- Map size increased (400 -> 450)
- Species Journals now require keeping the species alive for longer (5000 -> 7000) due to increased species longevity from egg changes.
- Wasps are now immune to spiderwebs
- Moths are now Grazers (grubs still eat indiscriminately)
- Grazers can no longer eat stalk fungi
- Locust brood size increased
- Interventions slowly drain if the world is in a dead state
Journal:
- The site that earthtongue takes place in has been recontextualized as the rim of a crater, rather then the entirety of an asteroid.
- Early journal entries more explicitly explain mechanics such as the nutrifall cap and biomass correlating with intervention rate.
- Roach and rhino beetle now mention Grazer. Between them, grazer behavior is fully described.
Bugfix:
- Species Age for journal-unlock purposes no longer resets on reload
- "Angry" bugs (Rhino Beetle) were erroneously only performing territorial killings when starving, they now properly perform such attacks.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes the portrait for a sprite was not showing in the research journal
- The music was set to be permanently extremely low, this has been fixed.
I'm going to be keeping a close eye on feedback over the next time, consdering that this is a rather major adjusting of the game. I believe it to be in a much more interesting place with this change. As always, if you desire to play the 1.2 version of the game, there is a legacy build in the betas tab.
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hotfix1:
wasps no longer spin webs
dead fungus no longer hangs in the air
dead fungus is produced at half the rate as before
corpses are only 75% as nutritious as they were before
Earthtongue QOL Patch 1.2.2!
Hey! It's certainly been a while, hasn't it? I came back to earthtongue in order to fix a bug and add in some QOL hotkeys, but ended up doing a few other things as well. Here they are:
QOL/Visuals:
- Upgraded to newer version of Unity
- Improved performance
- The game automatically autosaves every 500 time units.
- Hotkeys are now connected to the speed and pause menu in a way standard to most games like this. Spacebar will pause, and 1/2/3 number keys affect the speed.
- When nutrient exceeds the Nutrient Cap of the world (ie: too much of it locked in the soil and not making it back to the sky and the nutrient rain ceases), the text display of it now turns red to better inform the player of this.
- Spiderwebs no longer display at 100% opacity at full health, and are slightly grayer than pure white. I believe this makes them much less visually noisy and obstructive.
Feature and Rebalance:
- Species no longer randomly immigrate if your world has a biodiversity greater than 10, resulting in more stable worlds that are in a state of flourishing.
- Rhino Beetle and Roach have had a beneficial evolution and now use "grazer" behavior, meaning that they will never consume fungus that is below them. This makes them much less likely to overconsume fungi (and makes large fruiting bodies, like the mushrooms, a more appealing treat for them) and bring out mold extinction. Other herbivores still retain their destructive diet habits.
- Tiles are now able to hold a bit more nutrient.
Bugfix (haha):
- Journal Entries 10 and 11 are no longer erroneously the same.
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I've also added a new legacy build to the betas tab, if youd rather play without these recent changes.
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Finally I'd like to take a moment to say that I'm planning on a more significant (read: not just QOL) content patch to release within the next 6 months. I'll post details on what it planned in it on a later date
:etmantis::etmold::etmold::etmoth::etmold:
Hotfix to modules build
It was recently discovered that there was a bug causing very little nutrient to fall in the base game mode, thus rendering the ordinary game mode significantly more difficult than intended.
This has since been fixed! The main game mode should be far less impossible now.
Earthtongue Modules Update is live!
The Earthtongue Modules Update is live! Now using Steam Workshop, it is possible to create and share your own worlds filled with species and settings defined by you!
To showcase the sort of new options available from this, I've also included two new world types in the base game, which now also serve as additional game modes. One is the laid back, Halloween-themed "Pumpkin Knolls", and the other is the mystical and dreamlike "Celestial Hills."
Whether you're simply interested in playing the new worlds, or creating your own, this update should have something to offer for all of you.
Enjoy!
Earthtongue Modules Trailer!
The Earthtongue Modules Update will launch this Sunday (March 27th)!
Earthtongue 2.4.1 - a few small fixes and a couple tweaks!
Version 2.4.1
BUGS FIXED:
- Corpses should no longer become invisible upon game reloading
CHANGES:
- the Red Mantis egg should take longer to hatch now, which ideally should prevent a child from always consuming their parent.
- both Spores and Meteors can be picked up and moved by the player much like bugs can. Use this to direct fungus to your desired location, save life from destruction, or perhaps even intentionally burn down patches of fungus!
- added a new resolution option: 1920 x 1080
In other exciting news: I'm going to start working to enable user generated content for the game, it's going to be wonderful!